I have made so many mistakes - my whole life in fact has been a series of the most stupid mistakes. Mistakes that are all too common in those damn hills. The mistake of devoting yourself to someone who isn't devoted to you. Someone who doesn't know you...

Sometimes someone who doesn't even like you.

I never had anything there that was mine in that cabin on the hillside, all that I had ever called my own was my love and my hope. I held steadfastly to my hope, clinging, not as a drowning woman, but as someone who possesses something so wonderful they ache to let it go.

Over the long and difficult years I nourished my hope through the small acts I saw from Luke, I took pleasure in seeing Luke with our son Tom, the way he fathered him, spent time with him, this pleasure was also mixed with a sadness. I knew Luke wanted a son in his own image.

It was hard on me to know that I would do anything for him but I could not command nature to perform this simple act.

My god, how I loved him. My god, how fiercely I protected myself from heartbreak with the little lies that foolish women know so well. Slowly in tiny painful steps my hope that he would eventually love me was eroded.

The way he would come home after a week away and smile my way kept the flame of love and hope alive in my heart.

But as the financial responsibilities grew along with the children, his week away turned into 2 weeks, into a month and finally into only sporadic intervals, during which we waited with dull eyes and empty bellies.

I know I allowed my anxieties to colour my behaviour towards my children. I saw my eldest girl Heaven looking at me often with fear in her eyes and I knew she was losing respect for me – she hated her pa and I knew she couldn't understand why I continued to love him so. What would she know about the relations of men and women? Only what Luke and I had taught her – and I'm afraid we had taught her too well.

Fanny is a different story altogether, a very pretty girl; I see so much of Luke in her, her selfishness, her stubbornness and her unwillingness to learn. She is truly more of a burden to me than a daughter.

Heaven is so much easier to love and since we also share a need of love from Luke our relationship is much closer. Although she is not my biological daughter we are bonded in the same way since I was brought here as Luke's wife only 2 days after her birth.